


Dandelions in Your Backyard

by vegarin



Category: Torchwood
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-07
Updated: 2008-04-07
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegarin/pseuds/vegarin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were many tragedies in Owen Harper's life. The very worst of them was finding himself slowly falling in love with a woman who was already dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dandelions in Your Backyard

**Author's Note:**

> Season 2. Takes place after the season finale, Exit Wounds.

_The bitterest tear shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone._

\- Harriet Beecher Stowe

* * *

There were many tragedies in Owen Harper's life.

There was Katie, for instance, who, at the end of it all, cured every bit of romanticism in his bones. Being dead? Check. Being undead? Also check. Being the King of Weevils? Actually, that was pretty fun all around (not to mention useful), so no check on that point, but still plenty left to go. Being unable to be alive - really alive. Oh yes, big bloody check.

He found out eventually, though, all of them paled in comparison to the very last, and very worst one that he would have to live with.

There was nothing like realizing that you were slowly, inevitably falling in love with a woman who was already dead.

* * *

Two weeks after Toshiko Sato died, Owen Harper walked out of the remains of the nuclear power station meltdown, completely intact except for a couple of broken fingers.

In those two weeks, he had a number of thoughts. A lot of thoughts, actually, 'cause what was a man to do while frozen and marinated into the mix of thousand gallons of coolant and radioactive isotopes? So he had gone about thinking, as in, trying to figure out what in the bloody hell was happening.

He was dead, which had been true even before he walked into the power plant as well as after. So, the real question was why he wasn't melting away into tiny bits of nothing. He should've been disintegrated and decomposed into oblivion, yet here he was, frozen in the containment chamber and still semi-alive - at least he _thought_ he was, because he was conscious and thinking, although what was a thought except a firing of a neuron...?

All right, not going there again, because there was no answer to that question, and there would never be. Back to science: the coolant could have affected his dead body, which resulted in the current frozen-like-a-doornail situation. Could it have negated the effect of the radioactive matters, though? His body was still disintegrable, as proven by his forever-broken fingers, so, no, his every molecule should have melted away by now. So, this was not possible.

There was no impossible in Torchwood.

Torchwood. Torchwood. Torchwood.

And on and on, he thought - Torchwood. Nothing was impossible. So he was alive. Or, at the very least, not totally dead. He didn't entertain the possibility that this was the miserable version of his afterlife, so no, not dead. Not yet. He wouldn't go. Not this way. All he had to do was hang on.

So he did.

After an eternity, he opened his eyes and found himself being able to wiggle his single toe. Then five of them. And then all of ten. His fingers finally bent, all eight of them, to will.

So he eventually thawed. And was able to move around when the rest of the chamber didn't turn into radioactive rubbish. All of which was fantastic except for the fact that he couldn't even try to get out of the compound because he couldn't breach the containment, not knowing how much had been actually contained.

And so he kept on thinking. About the life unlived. About being a coward, being too cowardly to risk his heart once again and breaking someone else's heart altogether in the process. About the chance untaken. About the life - or unlife, as it were - that he wanted.

About what he was going to _do_. To live.

After another eternity, he heard the sound coming from outside the compound. Noise. Gates screeching and opening, and heavy footsteps. Owen ran up to the door of the control chamber, only to fall flat on his butt when the men with protective suits entered the control chamber - the men who were equally shocked, if not more, than he was - and knocked him out by accident. It was good that he could no longer feel anything, because that would've _really_ hurt.

"What in the heaven of..." one of them began, flabbergasted, and changed his incantation entirely. "What in the bloody hell are you doing here?"

"Uh," Owen thought quickly. "Torchwood. I'm with Torchwood." He patted down his jacket to fish out his ID, actively trying to avoid wondering again exactly why and how he, not to mention his ID and clothes, was still intact.

Owen could see that the man was rolling his eyes even through the thick protective headgear. "Torchwood, SoddingBloodyWood, I don't care. This area is not even cleared yet - didn't you see the bloody sign?" The man thrust beeping equipment at him and waved it up and down. "Huh, you're actually fine. Well, don't you go around tempting fate any longer. Out. Now."

"Uh, right," Owen said - he was _fine_? - as he carefully took tentative steps out of the chamber. "Sorry. Won't happen again."

When he walked out of the compound, the sun was shining over Cardiff, bestowing a little bit of light even on the remnants of the end - or, at least how close to the end it could've been. The point was, though, that he didn't care - could not. He was undead, and the world was still here, alive. That mattered.

The com wasn't working, of course, so when he walked into the Torchwood, the top entrance, he was treated to the incredibly rare sight of Ianto being completely speechless.

"... _Owen_?" Ianto stuttered, clearly not caring about the two cups of coffee he had dropped and were currently decorating the floor. "Is that... I mean, it's really...you?"

"Yes, me. Really." Owen would've rolled his eyes if this wasn't one of the special moments he was exceptionally glad to see Ianto, but it was, so he laughed. "And on the account of the fact that I am me - couldn't you have come to collect my carcass? Granted, you've probably all thought nothing was left of me and there's no heat signature left in my body to detect anything, but still. Some checking would've been appreciated. At the very least I wouldn't have had to walk all the way here."

Ianto blinked into recognition. "You are Owen. I mean, Owen, how...?"

"Wish I knew." Owen looked around, finding, to his joy, that Torchwood was still standing and Ianto had the time to make coffee - so they must've won. Oh, thank the Lord, or whatever the hell was presiding over this screwed-up world. He turned to Ianto. "Did we get that bloody ex-boyfriend's of Jack's? Jack _is_ back, isn't he? Everyone all right?"

If Owen hadn't been so glad to be undead, he would have noticed the quiet look in Ianto's eyes. But he didn't notice anything amiss even when he and Ianto walked into the Hub to be greeted by Gwen and Jack.

"Owen, oh my god, Owen!"

Gwen hugged him so tightly that he was worried about his non-healable state of being. "Okay, okay, I get it and thank you for not commenting on how much of a wreck I am. Probably smelly, too."

Gwen was cracking a grin even when her face was stained with tears. "Oh god, Owen. How - what happened? We all thought you were gone."

"Well, I don't blame you, since so did I. I mean, I was - whoa."

He was cut off by Jack's equally tight - if not tighter - hug. "Owen," Jack said, his voice breaking. "Owen."

It was funny, how Owen felt pretty damn glad to be alive. Happy, even. "I'm glad to see you in one piece, too. Exactly how long was I tucked inside the folds of the nuclear waste?" he sniffed at his shirt. "Oh, Jesus. I really am smelly and disgusting."

"But not radioactive." Ever the efficient, Ianto confirmed, standing behind him with contamination measurement gadget. So nothing had changed. And that wasn't such a bad thing.

"Good to know," Owen said, still kind of grinning, except. Except. "Where's -"

"Two weeks," Gwen said quickly. "The meltdown was two weeks ago. You were gone for two weeks. We thought, well, we all thought…"

"Yeah, all right. Where's Tosh?" he asked, almost happily, because this time, he wasn't going to be an utter moron with her. He had indeed wasted the last chance, so he wasn't going to tempt fate with his last _last_ chance.

He turned to face his friends, who were uniformly staring back at him like they had just lynched his puppy together and were afraid to confess. "What?" he asked.

Nothing. Ianto was looking away and Gwen's face was run down with tears again. "Owen," Gwen started, but couldn't actually finish the sentence.

Owen ruthlessly suppressed the dread creeping into his heart. "All right, you are all scaring the hell out of me. Out with it. What is it?"

Jack shut his eyes and ran his hand over his face. When he opened his eyes again, his eyes were dark, his body stiff, almost painfully so. "Owen," Jack said slowly, his every word slow and marked, "Tosh is gone. She's dead."

The words really didn't register. Owen whirled around to face everyone - Jack, Ianto, Gwen - all irritatingly grim in their stricken expressions. "Right. Right, right." He laughed so hard he could almost feel his stomach in stitches. "Did she put you up to this? Of course she did. Tosh!"

He rushed up the stairs and methodically went through each office. "Tosh! Where are you at? Come on out now. I know I didn't appreciate you enough and everything, but this is a bit excessive as a punishment, all right?"

He whirlwinded through the rooms. Nothing. Tosh. Tosh - "Okay, can't tease me like this, it's beginning to be truly unfunny now. Tosh!" Nothing. He ran down to the Hub, still yelling her name, ignoring his friends who were frozen on their spots. "This is a bad joke, such a bad one at that - "

His eyes, roaming, ended on Tosh's desk. Which was empty.

He stopped dead.

It wasn't true.

"No," he said.

"Owen," Gwen said, her hand on his shoulder.

He pushed the hand away, and closed his eyes and unfurled his fists. No. It wasn't true. But there was only way to be sure.

He willed himself to walk until he arrived where he needed to be. He didn't know why or how he knew, but he did and he didn't stop his legs until he was at the Morgue. Until he forced himself to take a few steps into this space that he was so familiar with. Until he saw that there were two new additions.

"Owen."

"Don't, Jack." Owen didn't glance at the form lingering at the entrance. He didn't have to turn around to know where Jack was, or to know that Ianto and Gwen would be standing behind him wearing the same, pained expressions. His eyes remained at the frozen coffins in front of him.

He pulled one lever - one of the coffins slid out. And he found her there, finally.

There she was, Toshiko Sato.

She would have been cold to the touch if he could've felt anything on his fingertips, but he couldn't, so it was all right to touch her face, to touch her hand, because he could not tell the difference, didn't have to feel the difference, between Tosh who was alive and Tosh who was lying here.

She wasn't asleep, because she didn't look this content in her sleep, this peaceful.

He covered her hand with his. Held it so tight it would've hurt her. But it was all right, because she was not here. Because she was dead. Because she was dead. Because she was dead.

Because - "Who did this?" he asked, but he didn't know how he could make any sound when his chest and throat and mouth felt like ashes, ready to crumble.

"Who did this? Tell me. Tell me now." He whirled around to face Jack. "Tell me!"

Jack came toward him, and his eyes - if Owen could hold up a mirror in front of him, he suspected that he would have seen the exact same look in his own. "It was Grey, my brother. He shot her while she was trying to stop the power plant meltdown."

"Your brother?" Jack really had a brother? _What?_ What was he saying? Owen shook his head. "No, no, no. Tosh stopped it. We stopped the meltdown - she was fine, she was just talking to me over the com -"

 _Hey, you hurt?_

 _Me? No. I'm fine. Just my arm..._

Oh god.

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Why -

He didn't know he was screaming until he felt Jack and Gwen holding his arms and restraining him. When he came to, Ianto was shaking him. "Stop it, Owen. Calm down!"

Someone had said that before, he remembered the frail voice. Someone said, Owen, please. Please -

He didn't care, it didn't matter. He grasped at the people holding him back, pushing back and swinging. "Why is she still here? Why isn't she buried? Why is she - why is she like this? Answer me - _Answer me_ , Goddammit!"

Jack and Gwen were holding their silence, as if they couldn't bear to - as if they said anything, it would become true. Ianto said instead, "She officially died trapped inside the nuclear power plant. With you. So we couldn't give her back to her family under some other pretense."

Owen stopped struggling and stared at Ianto, who quieted down. "She's gone, Owen. I am so sorry."

Ianto was sorry because she was dead. So, she was dead.

He felt like laughing, so he did. He hit the floor repeatedly with his fists because it was just so damn funny. There wasn't anything funnier in this world. "So, she is dead? She is actually dead, and I'm here? _I_ am here?"

"Stop it," someone screamed at his ear, "don't do this to yourself. You'll hurt yourself. Owen!"

"Why the hell not?" he said, swallowing a bitter laughter. "Give me one good bloody reason why I shouldn't do this to myself, and it'd better be a good one, because I myself cannot think of one _single_ good reason why I shouldn't do this to myself!"

 _Because you are breaking my heart_ , she said.

 _Because you are breaking my heart_ , she said, her tiny voice already breaking into bits, and he didn't know. He hadn't known.

 _Even now, huh? Even now trying to get me out of trouble, Tosh? But what of mine, Tosh? What of mine, then?_ He wanted to scream. _You are breaking my bloody heart - what of it?_

 _How could I, when I came back and you are not here?_

 _Please stop_ , she asked him.

The sharp laughter died in his throat. He trembled.

He stopped because she asked.

* * *

This was his moment of Tosh, burning in golden amber around the grey edges of his memory:

One spring afternoon, in the middle of the process of locating yet another localized source of the Rift activities, they end up on this countryside field full of weeds and more weeds.

Except, they are not weeds, according to Tosh. With her gun in her one hand and the Rift monitor on the other, she hovers over a patch of yellow weeds, her eyes wide.

"Dandelions," she says defensively, when he glared at her with annoyance. "When I was young, there were so many of these around, but I can hardly see any lately. You know, I used to think I would grow up to live in a white picket-fenced house surrounded by dandelions."

"I didn't know you were so girly, Tosh," he says, which is rather mean, he admits to himself, but there she is, so damn romantic, and he can't help himself. "C'mon, we have work to do."

But then she lags behind for a few seconds to pick up a dandelion. She then places it carefully into her pocket while looking rather happy, as if she thinks it'll survive their search for extraterritorial activities. Right. She is so damn hopeful, which grates on him all the time. Her personal life is as miserable as his, if not worse, because while he freely enjoys what life has to offer without actual disappointments (by being a manwhore, Gwen would say, but hey, no disappointments there), Tosh doesn't even allow that - well, that one incident with Mary the alien not withstanding.

And yet, still, she has hopes, and every time when she is like this, he feels like a fool for having given up.

He waits for her to finish with the flower, though, albeit begrudgingly. "Thanks, Owen," she says gratefully when she catches up. He pretends not to see her small, sheepish smile.

Turns out, the flower is crushed when they both end up on the ground in the struggle with yet another fish-y alien that ended up on the wrong side of the Galaxy.

And he doesn't feel any less like a fool when, upon finding the crushed flower in her pocket, her smile is gone.

* * *

"Where is it?"

Jack held his arm out, blocking him. "Don't, Owen."

Owen didn't really care for Jack at this point as much as the container valve behind him. He shoved Jack away and grabbed the container, pulling it open. It was empty. "Where is the bloody Glove?"

"Not here," Jack said behind him, entirely calm.

"Where is the Glove, Jack?" Owen asked, his voice barely contained because he knew he would not ask twice. He would kill Jack if had to, since the bastard wasn't going to stay dead, unlike... he blocked the trail of thoughts and curled his hands into fists. "You brought me back. You can bring her back. Do it. Please."

Jack shook his head firmly. "Do you really want to impose that on her? I can't. _You_ can't. What's going to come across this time? Think, Owen. You were lucky and _still_ you stayed half dead. That's not life. Do you really want that for her?"

"I don't care - I am here, and she can come back, too, and she will be just fine. Please. Please, Jack." He saw the glint in Jack's eyes wavering, so he pressed on, "Don't you want her back? You can, so why won't you? Why the hell won't you bring her back? Don't you care about Tosh? You bloodless-"

He was jostled into stop, not because he felt the sudden slap across his face but because it was Gwen who slapped him, and he had never seen her this shook up, this sad. "How could you be so selfish?"

That put him in his place. Owen stopped.

"How could you want to do that to her? Don't you at all think of Tosh? Do you think this is what she would've wanted? How, Owen?" Gwen was crying so hard that her entire body was trembling. "Do you think you're the only one who lost her? She was our friend, too. How could you think only of yourself?"

Owen didn't give a rat's ass if he was selfish, truth to be told. Didn't care one nugget if Gwen convinced herself that she had been Tosh's friend and experienced just as much of a loss as he did. Sure. Why not? It was not impossible. Maybe Tosh wouldn't want it, and even that didn't change the fact that he wanted her back.

Except. She wouldn't want it. She really wouldn't.

Could he do that to her? And then face her again?

The answer was no.

The answer was bloody no, a thousand times asked, a thousand times told.

 _Owen Harper, you are an idiot,_ she would say.

He crumbled onto the floor. His friends came and held him, like they were attempting to tie him into this world because the anchors that had held him here were gone. Their tears fell on his face.

He was glad, because he had nothing he could give her now, not even a single tear left in his body.

* * *

There were many tragedies in Owen Harper's life, some of them his own making.

The very worst was in that in every moment of falling in love with Tosh, in every moment of remembering, he could now only remember her tears.

* * *

The thing about being sort of dead was that there was no way to get drunk. Or have sex. Or get high. Or sleep. Anything that could put his head out of commission for just a second - there was no way to do that.

There was no way to forget.

So, he went the other way around. Memory overload. His non-operating brain would have to experience some type of overload somehow. It would have to snap one way or another if he kept at it.

In the first month, he watched her last message 211 times. He didn't need to sleep, and it wasn't as if he had nothing better to do, anyway.

One particular night, he replayed the video 98 times and he watched her say, " _And Owen_ " - and she smiled there, this small smile that made him want to grab her and hold her and never let her go - " _you never knew_."

He could see it. She glanced across the hub to see him. She brought him midnight snacks when she was dead tired. She always wanted to help him. She never said no.

He thought now, about the life unlived. About being a coward - being too cowardly to risk his heart once again and breaking someone else's heart altogether in the process.

The CCTV was the special program that he had kept for particularly trying nights, like the night after their second mission. The second mission after Tosh. In Tosh's spot, Martha came in. Temporary measures, Jack had said, and Owen nodded, agreeing without disagreeing, even though they all knew it was not a temporary measure and he liked Martha enough. Once in the team's hot pursuit for wild runaway Weevils, he had turned around to check on his teammates. Saw Martha in Tosh's stead and swallowed the scream in his throat.

Tosh's desk was gone - moved. No one really dared to occupy that same space, next to Owen's. When it had been moved, everyone furtively shot glances at him, waiting for his tacit approval. He had said, "We should all move on, really," and it cost him to say the words, as flatly and unblinkingly as possible.

So now he watched, again and again, the CCTV record of that fateful day, from the beginning to the end. Nothing cheered him right up like watching Tosh dragging her bloody body into the autopsy room. Every inch she moved in the blue screen, he felt the sharp glasses grating against his chest.

So, he was still feeling pain, imaginary or otherwise. Therefore, he was alive, not dead. This was the only way left for him to know.

A hand suddenly appeared across the keyboard and turned off the screen. Owen caught the retreating arm and glared at its owner.

"Stop watching," Ianto said, his voice unbearably calm.

Owen turned around without a word and powered up the screen again. On the screen, Tosh was a tiny blur that took up so little space. If he strained enough, he could hear her voice, reassuring him that she was fine, don't worry about her, because she was fine, because why wouldn't she? She would always be there for him. Well, evidently it wasn't true, was it?

"You need to stop torturing yourself."

She took up such a little space. Sometimes it was so easy and so impossibly hard to ignore her. Why did she have to be like that? Why didn't you see -

"Owen, listen. She dealt with this a lot better than you are doing now. She saved everyone, and she went peacefully. I don't think she suffered."

That, Owen had to comment on. "Didn't suffer? I suppose you didn't see the blood on the floor when you cleaned it out."

"Stop beating yourself up. There was nothing else you could've done. Can't you see that?"

"I'm not beating myself up."

"Really? Then, what are you - "

"I'm not beating myself up because it was you - you, Jack and Gwen - who didn't save her when you could have," Owen said flatly.

Ianto froze, like a bucket of ice water was thrown at him from top to bottom.

Owen felt the venom in his words and almost meant it. "I can see you all right here," he tapped on the screen, "taking your sweet time getting reacquainted, hugging each other in all the joy while Tosh and I were trying to stop the nuclear disaster right here on Cardiff. It would've been so much to ask to hurry it up a little, to see if Jack's lunatic brother was doing any harm at the Hub. Of course a little snuggling came first. I hope Jack thinks it was worth it."

"Owen, don't."

Owen inserted Jack's name here and there, just to see Ianto get riled up, and it worked, to a point. "Oh, why the hell not, really? Let's get the blame-fest start right up. She didn't suffer? Do you _see_ her there? You think _that_ wouldn't have hurt? It's all fine and dandy because your loverboy Jack's alive and well? If he got here a little faster, this wouldn't have happened. If he wasn't so hung up on his brother -"

Ianto snapped, "So you're blaming Jack now? That Jack hurt her? Who you think hurt her the most around here?"

" _That's exactly why_!" Owen exploded, regardless of how sorry Ianto looked for saying what he'd said. "What else am I supposed to do? Die again? Create another nuclear explosion to decompose myself? It doesn't seem that easy, seeing how I'm impervious to incineration. I haven't exercised for a week - rigor mortis hasn't even set it, and neither Martha or I know what the hell is wrong with me except apparently now my body isn't alive but no longer totally dead, either. Then what? Maybe I should tie myself onto a wrecking ball and crash my skull - maybe that'd do the trick. Or conjure up her ghost to say I'm sorry? This is the only way I know... that I know -"

He stopped. This, this wouldn't bring her back. Even torturing himself, as Ianto put it, was going to change nothing.

"I broke her heart," Owen said, because it was the truth.

Ianto was shaking his head. "She loved you, and if there is no way to repay it, then you live with it. That's what she would've wanted, and you know it."

Ianto watched him, waited for his reaction, but there wasn't anything to say. Owen just sank back into the chair and stared back at the screen.

Live with it. He wasn't living with it because he wasn't living. This wasn't it. Because whatever was left of his heart, he had given it away.

Fair was only fair, he supposed. She had said he was breaking her heart.

And now, in turn, she was breaking his, everyday, from beyond the grave.

* * *

There were many tragedies in Owen Harper's life, some of them his own making but most of them not.

The worst. The very worst was in that every excruciating moment of falling in love with Tosh, his Tosh who was already gone, he was realizing this must've been exactly how she would've felt years ago, falling in love with him.

And he hadn't known.

* * *

"You're Toshiko's friends?"

His lips wouldn't work to make any sounds, so Gwen, with a reassuring hand on his shoulder, answered instead, "Yes, Mrs. Sato. We were her friends. We just came by…to see if everything was, well, taken care of."

This had been a mistake, obviously. Gwen had wanted to come by Tosh's place, to check everything was in place. They didn't know exactly what the arrangement her family had made. Gwen wanted him to come along and he did not say no.

"I've never been to her place. Have you ever been?" Gwen had asked, carefully.

"Not for a while, no." His voice had been almost normal.

They were moving on, all of them. In the first six weeks, Gwen had always paused at the space where Tosh's desk used to be, with her eyes wet. Jack had acted as if nothing was wrong, except for his longer, pronounced moments by himself at his office. Ianto had taken over some of Tosh's tasks, and a frown on his face had become etched and strained.

All of this stopped days ago, because they had to go on. Owen understood that, except he wasn't sure if it was rage or envy he felt.

Tosh's flat wasn't empty. He had half expected everything to have disappeared, but it was exactly the same, except the occupant. Tosh's mother was sitting on the couch, her hands tightly on her knees as if she removed her hands she would tumble, and asked them questions.

"I have seen your pictures," she said. Tosh's pictures covered the coffee table in front of her. "I didn't know...I didn't know what to do. We can't bring ourselves to sell the place..."

He remembered Tosh's story - he was the only one, he knew, that she had told about her past voluntarily. Tosh had risked everything, including her life, to save her mother. And he couldn't do a single thing to help now.

"We can help you, Mrs. Sato," Owen said, suddenly. "We live nearby, and we can look into the flat regularly, until you decide what to do."

Owen felt Gwen's eyes on him, but he refused to meet them. He kept his eyes on Mrs. Sato, who slowly, quietly broke in tears. "She told us she had very good friends. I'm...I'm glad."

Her words raked down in his chest until his heart, which no longer beat, was nothing but dried-up sandpaper.

Mrs. Sato left an hour later, and Gwen asked after: "Owen, are you sure about this?"

He didn't answer, because he was looking at the photos on the table. The most recent ones were from Gwen's wedding, him in his ridiculous t-shirt and a blazer, and she looked almost happy. Almost. Never quite there.

"Well, then," Gwen said, awkwardly. "I'll leave you to it, if you want some time alone."

He waved at her, and she was on her way out, until she stopped and turned around again. "Owen."

Her subdued tone made him look up.

"Are you ever coming back to us?" she asked.

She didn't mean to the Torchwood Hub today. He couldn't answer when he didn't know the answer. "I'm not sure. I'm not sure, Gwen."

His answer hurt her, he knew, but there wasn't anything he could - or want - to do about it. She left, and he didn't.

He stayed, because hanging on to this, even this, comforted him when there was no comfort to be found.

He looked at the remnants of Tosh that he hadn't known. At the kitchen, he found that she overdid on instant noodles and loved milk chocolate - she had kept a secret stash of milk chocolate and Milky Ways at the very bottom of her left kitchen cabinet. From the state of her garage and storage, he found that she was badly equipped to handle any degree of earthquake and she preferred Merlot, but had a couple of Chardonnays. She had a minimal makeup set but had a few different lipsticks that he had never seen her wear. She had hidden one bottle of perfume at the back of the drawer in the washroom. At her desk, he found a collection of comics. Apparently she was the epitome of a science nerd. He almost laughed, because he thought of her, glasses dangling on her nose, glaring at him over a comic book she was reading and protesting over the usage of the term "nerd." "I think 'geek' would fit there better," she would say.

No, she wouldn't, because she wasn't here.

In her room, in her first drawer next to the bed, was a picture of him and Tosh, taken in a few weeks after he had joined Torchwood.

Every corner of the room was pervaded by loneliness.

He toppled on the bed, because his legs couldn't support him any longer.

Live with it. Live with it. Live with this… feeling in his chest. Tosh obviously did, and she had. And there were things to do, more important than his loss, his loss of her.

Maybe this was a fitting punishment. To live with it, like Ianto said. Maybe it was the only possible punishment.

When had he given his heart for her to break? And why so late?

And why now, when it was too late, did he remember her small hands that had tried, so hard, to hold him together when he was falling apart?

Later, when he turned to Torchwood, he answered Gwen because that was the only way he had left. "Yes, I am."

Gwen had bright tears in her eyes, and her hug was tight.

* * *

There were many tragedies in Owen Harper's life, some of them for the universe to be blamed.

The very worst was finding out that in every moment he was falling in love with her, forever was one word he could no longer bear.

* * *

One of Tosh's journal entries began with: Owen is an idiot.

He smiled. Sometimes it was undisputed that he was, indeed, an idiot, and this being right after Tosh found out he had been romping around with Gwen, well, it was understandable.

He didn't plan to sneak out items from her flat, and he certainly did not mean to look into her journals, but it had happened, and in his third visit, he had found the small notebook underneath the couch.

He kept it in his jacket pocket all day. He thought of it in the middle of the autopsy for a female who died from a bite from a worm-like creature. It couldn't really be ascertained that it was terrestrial. Or extraterrestrial, for that matter.

But this mystery, which had occupied him and the Torchwood 3 for the last couple of weeks, was suddenly unimportant. He dropped the incision knife and took out the notebook. At first, just to look at the cover. And seconds later, he touched the surface. It tugged at him in odd places.

Sure, it was a gross invasion of her privacy, but she was dead and long gone from caring, and he wanted to know. What exactly he wanted to know was still not certain.

He took off his blooded gloves and started reading. Her words, her world, poured into him, and he wanted more, because there was nothing else left. When he flipped open the last pages, something slipped between the papers and fell onto the floor.

The tiny yellow petals spread all over at his feet. He froze.

When he slowly looked up, she was sitting on the exam table, right beside the corpse in pieces, her arms perched at the raining and her tiny feet dangling. He stared at her face, at her small smile at him, and every look, every glance was an ache.

"You should've told me," he said, unable to take his eyes off the apparition. Delusion, hallucination, whichever it was.

Her nose wrinkled when she frowned, and he wanted to bang his head against the stone wall for recreating her exactly down to the last twinkle in her eyes when she asked, "Should've told you what? That I salvaged the crushed flower and kept it in my journal, so you can call me girly again?"

"That you were shot!" Owen stretched his arms out in flat exasperation. "I was going on and on about my impending second death while you were already dying. Why didn't you tell me?"

"And you've done what, rush out of the nuclear power station in the middle of the meltdown from across the city back to Torchwood just to find me dead? Oh, you probably wouldn't have come that far. Probably about the halfway here, the half of England would've been incinerated. So it's safe to say you wouldn't have made it."

"I would have tried. I would've been there for you even just for a fraction of a chance, didn't you realize that? How - why, Tosh? You could've given me the choice, and now - now I cannot let go."

She shook her head. Her smile was still wistful. "You know you would've stayed at the plant. There was no other way. You would have had to - I would've done the same. I just didn't want to make you choose."

"God," his voice escaped him, cracking along the way. "I miss you."

A hand touched the top of his head. "Shhh, it's all right, Owen. It really is."

Her words echoed his, just before the moment the white flashes had flooded the containment shelter at the nuclear power station. He remembered them, engraved them in his memory. Only now he realized it wasn't the truth.

It was not all right, because she wasn't here.

"Tosh?"

Her apparition was gone, only leaving behinds the yellow petals surrounding him.

He picked up the dried flowers. He could have given this to her, even in the midst of their world, in which deaths occurred every single day and they were outnumbered in their invisible fight to protect the world from the unknown - even in this world, he could have given her this little bit of happiness, like she had.

He thought now, about the life unlived. About being a coward - being too cowardly to risk his heart once again and breaking someone else's heart altogether in the process. About the chance untaken. And would remain untaken forever.

Forever was such a long time.

He had been ready to go there and then, back at the plant, and yet, he was still here, dodging yet another bullet.

Maybe he had not been meant to survive.

"Owen?"

Martha stood at the staircase. "Everything all right, Owen?"

"Yes, sure," he said, as he had said to all of his friends to assure them - to get them away. "Everything is fine."

But she stayed, almost like hesitating, which was so unlike Martha he had to look up. "You can't bring her back," she said, not completely unkind. "Even if you could turn back time, there isn't much you can do - trust me."

Maybe.

But maybe, maybe there was.

"I know," he said to Martha, while thinking of Tosh, surrounded by little yellow flowers and smiling happily - wherever she was.

He would have wept if he could.

* * *

The worst tragedy in his life was slowly falling in love with a woman who was already irrevocably, unchangeably dead.

Or, was she?

* * *

After five months, Owen was back on the roof where he had saved a woman who had lost her husband and wanted to die. He had stopped her, because there was still things worth living for, or so he had thought.

Now. Now. Now what he was thinking?

Well, whatever he was thinking was directly interrupted by a voice: "Pretty damn high. Don't know why I never noticed."

Owen snorted. "For a man who couldn't die, you're pretty much a chicken, Jack."

"You wound me, Owen. Thought I should be an ostrich, at the very least." Jack Harkness appeared from the shadow and came to stand beside him. He looked over the railing and took a step back, making a face. "Thinking of jumping?"

"What gave you that idea?"

Jack shrugged casually. "Martha might have said something."

"Oh, what she said was definitely true. I really am all that." Owen barely avoided Jack's hand ribbing at him. "Ow. Just because I can't feel, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt."

"Right, and if you fall from here, you probably will die for good. Might not, but probably will. Are you willing to test that theory? Is that why you are haunting this spot?"

"Answer my question first - why are you here?"

Jack's stare ended somewhere on the horizon. "Martha said you were talking to yourself, calling for Tosh."

Well, that figured. "She heard it wrong."

"Ah-ha, I don't think so. So, what's the idea here, Owen? You want to end it all, is that it? What are you thinking?"

"I am," he said, looking at Jack Harkness the time agent, "thinking about time travel."

Jack replied immediately, "Nope. No can't do."

"Not that I didn't expect you say that, but why not? Just tell me that. You break the rules all the time, so I'm curious. Why the hell not?"

"So, if I say no, you're gonna jump?"

Owen grinned. "It isn't some twisted blackmail, Jack. Can't promise I'd never do it, but I won't, at least not tonight, since I have to finish that autopsy."

There was silence - compatible one at that, and it was a long time coming. The nighttime in Cardiff was always unmistakably beautiful, despite whatever was happening within it.

"Time travel isn't going to bring her back," Jack said, eventually.

"Maybe not, but time travel itself isn't impossible, is it? Because of you, your brother and Captain John. Because all of you existed in this time, time travel exists. And I have time."

Jack's eyes bulged out. "What, so you're going to wait for the time travel technology to be developed and change the past?"

"Because that's the only way for me to look forward to anything in the future, even if it never happens. Is there anything wrong with that?"

It was a small comfort, all he had to go on with, but if that made facing future bearable, he was holding onto it.

And for the first time in the long time, he waited for the future.

He felt Jack's eyes on him for a moment, felt it when Jack looked away.

"I put Tosh into the stasis chamber a few minutes after her heart stopped. There was no way we could save her then, not with the amount of blood she lost." Jack stopped, then looked at him again. "In about thirty years, that probably will change."

It took Owen several seconds to digest, and then - oh, Jesus Christ, he could give Jack a damn good beating right about now. "You bastard! Why didn't you tell me before!" He grasped at Jack's shoulders with his both hands and yelled, "Oh, you could've told me months ago. Months ago and save-"

Jack held his arms and slowly said, "Because I was never sure if it would work - I'm still not sure on that point - and I needed to wait for you to get a hold of yourself. You seem to have, so here we are."

It didn't make Owen feel less like throttling Jack, but he turned away, tried to stop trembling.

"I heard you were a genius doctor, so maybe you can make sure it works. Unless you die before then," Jack vaguely gestured at the roof and the fall that would surely break anyone's neck, "but that won't happen if you are careful, no?"

Owen rubbed at his face. He didn't know how to feel. Ecstatic would have been the word for it, but the suddenness of it all took him off-guard, and he could not stop shaking. "Why are you telling it to me now, Jack?"

Jack's cheer died down and turned serious. "Because I want to make sure you have a reason to live."

"I..." Owen shook his head. He could make it work, but what if she didn't make it? What if... "What do I do, Jack?"

"You wait."

Owen stared at Jack - Jack who did not die - and at his own hands. He wasn't dead. Or alive. But he could wait, if that was the last thing he could do.

"You wait, Owen. And trust me, facing the years that are coming is the worst thing you'd have to bear, but you wait."

Jack turned away, and Owen caught him just before he was slipping into the darkness. "Was it you - what happened to me back in the power plant, how I survived - was that your doing?"

Jack turned around slightly, with his smirk in place. "Nah, I'm only as omnipotent as I make it out to be. Oh, and ask me about time travel in forty years."

Owen turned around, back to the night of Cardiff. This night was the most beautiful one he had seen yet. Yet. That was what mattered, because it held the promise of the future, where she would be.

He stopped trembling.

And he waited.

* * *

Time did what it did the best - it passed.

To the moment when he no longer had to wait.

* * *

Toshiko Sato opened her eyes in the golden sunlight.

The first thing she noticed was the breeze coming from the window, and the sunlight slipping through the linen curtains. She grasped at the blanket that covered her and blinked a few times more. She was still here. All right, then.

She tested her memory. Toshiko Sato. She worked at Torchwood. And the last thing she remembered was clearly not falling asleep in this place, in this room.

She then tested her limbs. They felt stiff, but seemed to be still working, so it was all right. She couldn't remember exactly why she thought they wouldn't work, but it wasn't as strange as this room that she just woke up in, so her mind was occupied with other things.

She took it all in, the small but clean, bright room with the bed at the corner, just by the window, and a white wooden desk on the other side. There was a rocking chair - a _rocking chair!_ \- on its right, and a wooden closet across the bed. Through the open door, she could see the glimpse of the rest of the house, just as bright and clean and, she admitted to herself, beautiful.

She could see that, with her eyes open, just outside the window, were endless fields of daisies and dandelions.

And through the open door, someone she knew walked in.

She didn't know why this brought tears into her eyes.

"Slow down, Tosh," he said, as he came by her side. "Take it easy."

He put a hand on her back and he brought a cup to her lips. "Slowly. Yeah, that's it."

The voice was so familiar despite something that was telling her it was not possible. "Owen?" she said, putting her hand on his that was holding the cup.

She might have imagined the tremor that went through his hand, then, might have imagined the sigh that she felt went through his body. She could not imagine, though, why her heart was breaking, right at this moment, without knowing its reasons.

"Hi Tosh," he said. He tentatively reached out with his hand and touched a lock of her hair. And for some reason, she didn't find it strange - maybe because his eyes held such disbelief, as if she was a mirage.

"What's the last thing you remember?" he asked, after a long moment.

"I..." Tosh blinked. The last thing? What was the last - _oh_! "Gwen got married last week, didn't she? Right, that was an event too traumatic to forget. And then there were those ghosts that came alive from the old film records the other day." She shuddered, because that had not been a good memory, but stopped when she saw his face. "What is it?"

"You don't remember your last week," he said, almost to himself. "Or maybe it would come back. Doesn't matter. Because you are...you _are_ fine. How do you feel? Do you feel fine?"

"Um, yes, I'd think so." She made a point by waving her hands a little and checking to see her legs would work. All fine. In fact, she never felt any better. He looked so relieved that she had to ask, "Owen, what happened? What was my 'last week'?"

"You just don't remember the last week, is all. The last week of your life. That is, you were dead."  Owen jumped up. "Oh, for crying out loud. I didn't mean to give it to you like this. I wanted to wait until you are well."

He looked so distraught that Tosh had to hold out her hand and get him back the chair beside her. "And I'm perfectly well, thank you," she said, as sternly as possible. "Now, answer the questions. I'm _dead_?"

"You were," he said, almost meekly.

"And I am not dead right at this point. Um, for how long was I, uh, dead?"

The answer was going to be bad, she could tell, because he stopped for a moment and took a long breath - she wasn't sure if he could breathe, which meant - how long was she gone for, anyway? "It's 2045, Tosh," he said, finally.

"Ah." 2045. 2045. 2045. Twenty Forty-Five. Oh, god. "My mother - my family, Owen?"

He said nothing, which meant - all right. All right. She shook her head. She would have to deal with the implications later. For now, she needed to know. "All right, how did I die?"

That question seemed to hit him pretty hard, because he shut his eyes and placed his hands over his face.

"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up a painful memory." If it had been at all painful, that was. Well, he might not have thought of her as much as she had thought of him, but it would still have been somewhat painful, right? she asked herself. She had been his teammate, after all, and a friend. But she didn't expect him to react this way, like it was unbearable, and it puzzled her.

"No, no, it's all right, Tosh. I didn't - I just wasn't prepared for the question because I thought you'd probably remember." He opened his eyes again. "You stopped the nuclear plant meltdown that would've brown up about the half of England."

"Oh," she said, surprised. "Well, that's good. Because I wouldn't want it to have been, you know, an incident with a toaster or while crossing the road getting hit by a truck driven by someone who didn't know which was the right side of the road."

When she finished her ramble, there was a small grin on his face. "No, it definitely wasn't that. You died saving all of us."

It was heartening to know, except. Except. Oh no. "What am I, Owen? Am I..? You didn't use the Glove, did you? Because that would mean I'm -"

His grin was wider. "What, a Weevil queen?"

She lightly slapped him on his shoulder. "Don't make fun of me. Is it my fault that my brain went right to that possibility?"

His grin stayed - even became playful. "No, nothing extravagant. Unfortunately, you're 100 human, no other addition."

"Well, that's good to know, because it would be, well, frightening," she admitted. "Then what, I have a day to live?"

"Not that, either. You're just like the rest of us. I brought you back, now, because we could save you now, when we couldn't back then."

He stared at her face, and then at her hand on his shoulder. To her surprise, his eyes were brimming - tears, she thought. She could not remember, if ever, if she had seen him cry, or whether he even could.

"Owen?" she said, not knowing what to do. She offered her hand, gently. "Owen. It's all right. Whatever it is, it's all right."

"I wasn't sure - bringing you back. Maybe you wouldn't want to be back, here. Your second life."

She wanted to make him feel better, because he took so stricken and she couldn't really figure out why. "Whatever it is, I'm glad you brought me back. I really appreciate it, even more now that it seems like there are no strings attached. I hope, you know, it didn't make your life difficult - I mean, I wouldn't want to have imposed on you such a way -"

"Tosh," he said. He took her hand gently and held it, his eyes still on her hands. "I wanted you back for purely selfish reasons. Because I couldn't face eternity without ever giving us a chance."

"Oh."  She couldn't keep her face straight, because she was sure she was tearing up, and because she wasn't even sure what he meant, really. "That's. I... Well, all right, I really need to know what happened in that missing week, because it seems to have been quite significant."

He laughed, suddenly, which surprised her - and him, too, she could see, as if he wasn't used to laughing now. "We have time. We have a lifetime to talk about it. And maybe we could start with what happened with Torchwood."

"Oh no, what happened to Torchwood? How is..."

"Come on, then," Owen grinned and put a hand on her shoulder. "You can find it out for yourself. Jack's waiting outside."

She didn't remember when and how she sprang up from her bed and when she started grinning.  But he held her tight in his arms, and she came alive. And she knew, instinctively, that he did, too.

And then, he led her outside, into the brilliant sunlight that held their future.

 

 

 **END**


End file.
